Glengonnar Halt Station – Scotland - Atlas Obscura

Glengonnar Halt Station

The highest station on the highest adhesion railway in the British Isles which passes through one of Scotland's most productive gold fields. 

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This station, between Leadhills, in Lanarkshire, and Wanlockhead, in Dumfries  and Galloway,  is the highest point on the Leadhills  and Wanlockhead narrow gauge railway. This is currently  a tourist railway but it used to be part of a commercially important railway, for both freight (usually  lead ) and passengers. Before it closed it formed part of the highest standard gauge railway  in the UK. It was a branch of the Caledonian Railway. The passenger trains on this railway operated in a very unusual  manner. There were few stations and passengers could request entry to or exit from the train at any point. Folding steps would be lowered by the guard to allow this to be done safely. The few stations  along the line never  had platforms  and steps would be provided  by the station porter. Being built as a “light railway” the maximum speed was limited to 20mph.

Whilst the Snowdon Mountain Railway (https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/snowdon) in Wales is higher than this line it operates on a rack and pinion system rather than relying  on frictional adhesion between the locomotive  wheels and the track. This line, short as it is, is the highest adhesion  railway  in the British  Isles. The original  railway closed in 1938 and the current  line was re-laid as a 2ft gauge railway in 1986. There are currently  plans to (eventually) extend the line back into Wanlockhead village. Part of the delay is due to red tape arising  from the line  crossing  into a different  county. The station is in a moorland region intersected by numerous  streams that are commonly  the site for amateur gold hunters to pan for gold in the sediments. On summer weekends the moorlands are often a hive of gold panning activity. 

This is not exactly  a preserved railway as it was reconstructed  from the track bed up and most of the infrastructure  has had a previous life. For example the coaches were all built on under frames of rolling stock from a railway previously used to transport extracted peat. Currently the railway  operates 4 historic  diesel locomotives whilst it’s only steam engine is under restoration.

Know Before You Go

The station is also known as Glenconnar Halt and is shown as such on some of literature. If you want to pan for gold here you need to buy a permit at the Wanlockhead  mining museum which also sells panning  tools and runs gold panning  training courses.